The rating (i.e., calculation of charges) of voice and data calls is done by an automatic message accounting (AMA) system or other type of rating system which calculates charges based on the originating and terminating customers' location, the type of call service (e.g. 800, software defined network (SDN)) and the time and length of the call. An AMA record is generated for each call for which a telephone company will bill a customer. Prior to divestiture (the disassembly of the Bell System into American Telephone and Telegraph Company-AT&T and seven Regional Holding Companies-RHC) calls were rated based on the location of the calling and called parties. Since, divestiture, AT&T and other Carrier Switched Networks (CSNs) have begun offering nodal services to customers. As a result, the CSN rating systems also need information about the Point of Attachment (POA) to the CSN from the LEC or other customers. Generally, the rating systems cannot easily extract this POA information from the numbers recorded today. The rating systems typically maintain a large, cumbersome data table that provides for each number used for a nodal service: the state, LATA (Local Access and Transport Area, area served by a local exchange carrier) and NPA (Numbering Plan Area) of the customer premise; the Vertical and Horizontal (V&H) geographic coordinates, NPA, time zone, daylight savings indicator, tax jurisdiction of the serving central office, and possibly other information. Today, the POA information is obtained using the above-identified data tables that must be updated for every new and changed nodal customer. The increasing number and variety of new calling services and new tariffs require accurate rating and allocation of calling revenues, which is becoming more complicated and burdensome to provide using existing rating techniques.
What is desired is a simplified, more cost-effective recording and rating method to enable carrier networks to accurately bill customers for these nodal services, as well as accommodating non-nodal services and future service applications.